Claim three should be testable. If it holds then you should be able to get out-performance over some holding horizon by buying the stocks of the dead CEOs. If you got the dates and the tickers that would be pretty easy to calculate.
In many ways I treat this finding as a lower bound on the value of the CEO. For one, I expect CEOs to capture much of their benefits to the firm in the form of higher compensation. For another, the replacement CEOs are also likely to be good, if not as good on average for firms where the last CEO was good. This number is really just the measure of the value lost by the firm by getting their second best CEO instead of their first.

Steve Jobs’ announcement that he’s taking medical leave led to an 8.3% drop in Apple’s share price. This suggests he is worth $26.5bn to Apple shareholders. This is vastly more than even the best paid CEOs get, and suggests that Mr Jobs’ $1 salary is one of the great bargains of all time. Which ...

If you got rid of the minimum wage we might see much more internships with travel and lunch stipends. By changing the structure of the pay we could see many jobs dropping below the hourly rate of the minimum wage but structured in a face saving way. A lot of desirable entry level jobs in the USA like fashion, music, and journalism are structured in this way.

Here’s another example of the “small truths, big errors” rightist rhetoric I wrote about recently: Sam Bowman says the minimum wage should be abolished to help the unemployed. Now, unlike some on the left, I’m happy to concede that orthodox economics applies here, and that lower wages would crea...

Have you seen "Super Economy"'s discussion of the spirit level? Haven't read the book, but his discussion seemed confined to a factual critique.
1)
http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/02/spirit-level-is-junk-science.html
2)
http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/07/spirit-level-writers-caught-lying.html
They also seem to have a much detailed critique elsewhere:
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/spiritillusion.pdf

During my holiday, I finally got round to reading The Spirit Level. And I have a problem with it. It’s not the data. This is convincing if you’re prepared to be convinced, and not if you are not. Facts are rarely decisive in political disputes. Instead, it’s the mechanism: how, exactly, does ine...

Ate here on Christmas day. I thought the food was massively over-salted and otherwise blandly seasoned. It was a disappointment.
We had the pancake above and a chicken curry plus rice and naan. The nan was more like pita than any other naan I'd ever had before.

Kirk, Cathy, and Vicky have shared many of their favorites with the rest of us over the years. This post, however, is ed (from Yuma) sharing one of his. After having a couple of way-too-salty meals, I have quit eating here. Reports are that the place has declined. Although I am delighted to have...

The fitness argument assumes a particular kind of genetic fitness, that of maximizing the individual's solo qualities. However, parental investment is itself a genetically determined quantity, at least in part (huge variation by species). Marriage is a social system that helps to select for men with traits that encourage high parental investment, which encourages a child's survival prospects as well as a number of other social traits like cooperation, patience, risk aversion, rate of inter-temporal substitution, and thrift.

I’ve never seen the point of marriage. For me, women are like horses - nice to look at, interesting to ride, but too much trouble to keep. Nevertheless, I’m intrigued by this new paper on the economics of marriage by Gilles Saint-Paul. He begins from the premise that the gains from marriage aris...

It's insufficiently appreciated just how well paid MPs are. Their annual salary is £64,766. According to the IFS, a single person on this income is in the top 3% of earners. If he has a partner earning £30,000 a year, this couple is also in the top 3% of household incomes. If a single MP claims...